Happy birthday
by paranoid woman
Summary: COMPLETE. Side story to The Connections Series written by me. This little fic takes place during chapters 1 up to 4. Here, Amita gets kidnapped but she discovers something so important that it'll change her life forever. Implied Charlie/Colby, violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** "Happy birthday, my slave," Part 1/3  
**Characters:** Amita/OMC, Amita/Charlie, implied Charlie/Colby  
**Rating:** M

**Warnings: **Psychological and physical torture.  
**Spoilers:** Episode 4.11 "Breaking point".  
**Summary:** Amita gets kidnapped by someone she used to love.

**Feedback:** Yes, feedback is love.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it, but I do own the original aspects and any OCs.  
**Beta:**_Thanks to my amazing beta._

_**A/N: **__This is a side story for The Connections Series written by me. This little fic takes place during chapters 1 up to 4._

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_HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY SLAVE, Part 1/3_

She could hear the voices of two men in the van she had been forced to get into. Inside the trunk, Amita was blindfolded. Handcuffs around her wrists and ankles.

Darkness everywhere.

But still, she could hear the voices. They were little angry whispers, which indicated that her kidnappers were having a fight.

She didn't have to wonder much about whom one of them was. She didn't need to hear his voice. Amita could smell him every time he was close. And she could feel her skin start to get cold because of the horror.

_Patrick Garner. Patrick Garner._

That name repeated itself over and over inside her head, and she couldn't control it. It was her conscience hunting her again, reminded her of the horrible mistake she had made in her past.

And that mistake was having met Patrick.

It had been fate's fault. Amita didn't deserve to have this kind of life. If she had known what kind of person Patrick was, she would have never become his girlfriend. But it had been a long time ago, almost ten years. And yet, he had kept going after her every once in a while.

When they were a couple and lived together, Patrick had stopped being the nice person she thought he was, and he had started to treat her as his personal slave. _No studying. No seeing your friends. No watching TV. You'll live only to please me._

It had been very likely that the mistreating would become worse, but Amita kept having faith in Patrick. A couple of months later, she had been slapped in the face after not washing the dishes the way he deemed appropriate.

She had left the apartment that same day, after being insulted and bitten by him. And she had never come back.

But he had. He had followed her every step. He had figured out where she lived, he had figured out where she was studying. Patrick had come back to her life over and over, demanding her to get back with him so they could be a happy couple again.

It was such a cruel, sick joke. _Happy couple. That's just outrageous._

Patrick had always tried to make her return to him as his slave in a weird, psychotic way, but he had never tried to hurt her again. Amita had always thought that she would be fine, that Patrick somehow would give up and that she would be able to continue with her life, not looking over her shoulder every time she got out of her apartment.

This time had been different. Patrick and some other man had kidnapped her, and there was no way for her to escape. And what was even worse, no one knew about her being gone…

Suddenly, there was the sound of a shot, and the car lost control for a minute.

Inside the horrible, asphyxiating trunk, Amita tried to free herself. It was impossible. When the vehicle stopped, she barely moved in the darkness that surrounded her, breathing hard, sweat running down her entire body, wetting her clothes.

One of the doors was open. There were some strange noises, some silence and then the door being closed.

The car started to move again, this time in reverse. When it went forward, it soon jumped like it had hit something on the road.

Amita started to tremble all over.

It was a long trip. And when it was over, she wished it had been longer.

The trunk was open, and it was obvious that someone was looking at her, but she couldn't see anything. She waited and waited.

She could smell his scent. He was so close to her.

Immediately, Amita was lifted by two strong arms. The pressure applied by the chest of that person belonged to the one she had imagined. There was no doubt it was Patrick.

Afraid of what might happen, she couldn't stop trembling. All of a sudden, she felt Patrick's mouth against her ear, while he continued carrying her to a place that was unknown.

"Hello, my slave. I've missed you."

She whined softly and heard him laugh a little. But she remained in silence, not wanting to challenge him, as that had always been a stupid mistake in the past.

After that, Patrick placed her against the wall and got rid of one of the cuffs she was wearing. He held her wrist firmly and used chains to tie her to the wall. Patrick wasn't gentle with her either, he was pushing her against that wall so hard at one point that she could feel the pressure on her back and knocked some air out of her lungs.

Her ankles were up next. They got tied to the wall with chains too, leaving her seated on the floor with her legs open in an awkward position that she knew it was going to hurt in a while.

What covered her eyes was removed.

She was in a motel room. There was a bed, a nightstand, a closet and a bathroom. It was all very cheap and depressing.

"What, you don't like it?" Patrick asked, being ironically crazy like he always had been.

"Where's the other man?" she dared to say, trying not to cry.

Patrick showed her a confused face. But he answered to her question without doing anything to her. "Oh, you mean Christian…? He started to chicken out, so I shot him and then ran the car over him. I'm being sensitive today."

Desperate, Amita breathed hard and swallowed, trying to control her nerves. He didn't want to give Patrick the pleasure he enjoyed the most… to see her in fear and pain, screaming and begging him to let her go.

"I think you're lucky today, my slave…" the man stated, and he pulled out a little knife that sparked some very bad memories in Amita.

The man stood in front of her while he played with his knife. He flipped it through his fingers like it was a coin. But coins didn't hurt when dropped onto a body.

She was completely at his mercy.

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_**A/N: FEEDBACK IS LOVE.**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** "Happy birthday, my slave," Part 2/3  
**Characters:** Amita/OMC, Amita/Charlie, implied Charlie/Colby  
**Rating:** M

**Warnings: **Psychological and physical torture.  
**Spoilers:** Episode 4.11 "Breaking point".  
**Summary:** Torture starts.

**Feedback:** Yes, feedback is love.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it, but I do own the original aspects and any OCs.  
**Beta:**_Thanks to my amazing beta._

_**A/N: **__This is a side story for The Connections Series written by me. This little fic takes place during chapters 1 up to 4._

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_HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY SLAVE, Part 2/3_

Patrick muttered, "Are you scared, my dear?" He was still playing with his knife.

Amita was trembling in front of him, but she dared to say, "No."

Strangely, Patrick stared at her with a serious look on his face. Then he whispered, "I see… I suppose we'll have to do something about that."

He put his knife back into his pocket and got out of the motel room. When he disappeared and the door was closed, Amita tried to free herself. This was impossible, as the chains were hurting her skin and the position she was put in was starting to feel awkward.

There was a phone next to the bed, but she was unable to get to it. Maybe if she could call the people from the motel… She started to think about how Patrick had managed to bring her inside the room without anybody noticing that she had obviously been kidnapped. The only possibility was that the motel rooms and stairs were in an angle that hid the guests from the host's reception.

She would have to fight Patrick herself and survive until she could find a way to ask for help. She tried to free herself again for several minutes, but then the door opened again and there he was, her ex boyfriend, the sadistic Patrick Garner, and he was carrying something.

Patrick stumbled a few times, trying to get something into the room. Amita gasped in horror when she saw what it was.

It was an old man who had been stabbed to death by Patrick. His blood ran over the wood of the floor and the cheap horrible carpet that lay next to the door.

"You fucking piece of shit," Patrick mumbled, because the old guy was giving him a hard time. Angry, he left the body on the floor and kicked to door to close it. "I hope you don't give me any more trouble or you'll suffer worse than death."

Then Patrick walked in circles around the corpse, one hand on his hip, another on his forehead, wiping the sweat that was running down it. Finally, he looked at Amita and gave her a wicked smile. "Scared, hon?"

She simply gasped again and pressed her back against the wall, trying to get as far from Patrick than she could, even if the chains hurt her more.

"Ha," the man laughed, and he knelt beside the body, looking at it. He pulled out his knife again and muttered, "So, what do you think, Amita? Should I let our host die like this, or should I finish him by making him unrecognizable?"

So the man was the motel's host. "No. Please, don't do that. Don't hurt him anymore," Amita begged, because she knew that she couldn't bear to watch a person be disfigured right in front of her… Nobody could.

"Oh… You really care about him. But does that really matter? I mean, he's dead," Patrick said. He immediately got up and kicked the man' lifeless body to prove his point, even if it was already obvious.

Amita writhed a little and she waited for Patrick to make his next move. The situation had already gone too far. Patrick had always been crazy, but he had also been pretty harmless. Now he was completely different. He was insane and out of control, and she wasn't able to predict what he would do next.

Now Patrick was admiring her tremble again with a soft smile on his face. He slowly approached her, noticing her jolting against the wall, and he knelt between her open legs, watching her face closely. "You know," he whispered next to her mouth, his eyes roaming her cheeks, her eyes, the shape of her nose, the curve of her chin, "This is not what I wanted. But you forced me to do it."

Amita held her breath.

"I could stay in control after you left me… but after what I saw… and after finding out that you were still denying the truth that was in front of your eyes… I just couldn't stand it anymore." Slowly, Patrick took a deep breath, approaching Amita's lips. He kissed her gently, and smiled when he felt her trying to punch the wall, provoking the chains to sound. But then he became serious again, almost melancholic, and he continued saying, "Why did you leave me for him? How could you? I'm so much better than professor Charles Eppes."

"That's bullshit. Charlie's a better man than you could ever be in your life," Amita snapped, not being able to hold her tears and her offensive words, even if it was very dangerous. Patrick was insulting Charlie. And Charlie meant everything to Amita. She dreamed about a family and a life of joy with him.

"You know what? I bet the guy is gay. Have you seen him? So fragile, so focused on his theories?"

What the hell was Patrick saying? "So what? I love him just as he is."

"Really? Mmm… Interesting. But you'll love _me_ more, slave of mine. I swear I'll make you love me. You'll learn to love the pain, even if you don't want to now."

He moved away from her and fetched some stuff from a bag that was on the bed. While he was trying to find something in particular, he kept talking. "After all, pain will be the only thing that'll be left for you when I open your eyes and you realize how stupid you've been and how much you'd like to come back to me." He took out a laptop and carefully placed it on the bed.

"I don't know if you've noticed it, Patrick, but I never wanted to see you again," Amita stated, trying not to sound scared.

"Yeah…, but that was before I gave you your birthday present."

Amita opened her mouth to say something, but after she processed what Patrick had said, she became speechless.

The man got what he wanted and he went close to her again. He stood in front of her, showing her a calendar. "I saw this at the reception, and it made me remember that June 5th is your birthday." Patrick looked at the dates, smiling with warm eyes. "Of course I know that there are some months left for that, but what the hell. I want to give you my present now. And I'm aware that doing that means bad luck, but I think that then again, isn't this bad luck enough already for you?" He opened his arms, pointing at the whole situation he had put Amita into.

She swallowed hard and saw other item that he was holding and now showing to her. It was a CD with unknown content.

"This is my little surprise. This is what will make you realize how much time you've been wasting with your perfect professor."

Still smiling, Patrick walked towards the laptop that he had left on the bed. He plugged it and put the CD in. And finally, he played the strange movie he was so excited about.

He returned to the place Amita was and knelt beside her. He pulled out his lighter, created the usual little flame and started singing while the images appeared on the screen. "Happy birthday to you…"

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_**A/N: FEEDBACK IS LOVE.**_


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** "Happy birthday, my slave," Part 3/3  
**Characters:** Amita/OMC, Amita/Charlie, implied Charlie/Colby  
**Rating:** M

**Warnings: **Psychological and physical torture.  
**Spoilers:** Episode 4.11 "Breaking point".  
**Summary:** Torture gets worse. Patrick Garner gets an idea into Amita's head that she won't be able to forget.

**Feedback:** Yes, feedback is love.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it, but I do own the original aspects and any OCs.  
**Beta:**_Thanks to my amazing beta._

_**A/N: **__This is a side story for The Connections Series written by me. This little fic takes place during chapters 1 up to 4._

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_HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY SLAVE, Part 3/3_

The images on the laptop screen showed Charlie and Colby talking in a deserted, quiet place where you could see the entire city.

"_When I was being held on that freighter and they had me handcuffed and Lancer was sticking me with needles, there's one thing that kept me going. That was knowing that my team was coming for me. No matter how screwed up things had gotten, that you, and David, and Megan, and Don were working hard and you were going to come through that door. The thing is Bonnie Parks –she doesn't have a team, she's got nobody. And she's locked up, handcuffed in the dark –I don't know what. But what I do know is that I want to be the one who comes through that door for her."_

Colby's voice made Amita start wondering what the hell was Patrick's point to make her watch that conversation. He was knelt on the floor, waving his lighter to her, watching the way it illuminated the little drops of sweat that were running down her face.

Amita tried to concentrate on the video and not think about the fact that Patrick was so close to her with something that could turn into a weapon. She discovered that her boyfriend and Colby were talking about the Bonnie Parks case, and she concluded that the tape had to be from a few months ago.

She focused on the voices she could hear. After Colby's words, Charlie started to get nervous.

"_I wanna help you… but I can not control what's going on in my head. You don't understand."_

Colby responded.

"_No, that's the thing, Charlie. I do understand. 'Cause I went through this exact same thing when I first saw a combat in Afghanistan. You have to talk about the attack. Every detail, every memory, every thought that went through your head when it was happening. You can't keep it all locked inside of your head. You can't just keep going around telling everybody you're fine."  
_

Suddenly, Charlie broke. His entire body was trembling.

"_Well, obviously I'm not fine."_

Colby was an amazing support.

"_That's why you gotta do something about it. It doesn't matter how scared you were; it doesn't matter if you wet your pants, man. There's nobody out here that's gonna hear it."_

"Now here it comes the good part," Patrick muttered, and he sat on the floor, next to Amita. He laid his back on the wall, still holding the lighter. "Enjoy the show, dear."

After a few seconds, Charlie started to tell Colby everything that he had felt during the car chase that had almost taken his life.

"_I was just… driving. I just hang up the phone with Don and…"_

"He told Agent Granger everything… Everything he hadn't shared with you…" Patrick started talking, while he played with the flame of the lighter, running his palm over it watching the fire move along with it. "He trusted him and not his girlfriend… What do you think that means?"

"It means nothing," Amita responded, and she was annoyed by Patrick's suggestions.

"Really? What happened when you saw the two of them after their little encounter?"

"Nothing weird." However, inside Amita's head, she had seen something strange going on between Charlie and Colby. She remembered getting into her boyfriend's garage and finding them writing equations and marking maps like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to do. They had never shared that level of trust; they had never worked together like that.

Charlie had never kept his fears from Amita. He had never hidden his feelings from her and told somebody else.

But this time he had.

All of a sudden, Patrick's words started to make sense in some odd way she had no idea where it had come from. That couldn't be what he was suggesting, there was no way.

And then he whispered into her ear, caressing her hair softly, "Yeah, that's it. You're remembering the first time you saw their new connection. And you're realizing that from that moment on, you weren't the one Charlie wanted to be with."

Amita held her breath, and she could hear Patrick singing again, waving the lighter in front of her. "Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday, my slave… Happy birthday to you…" Then he laughed and stared at the woman he had kidnapped just a few hours ago. "Aren't you enjoying my present? Isn't' it great when gifts come in advance?"

"Shut up," she whimpered, trying to control herself. She started remembering all the times she had seen Charlie and Colby together after the Bonnie Parks case. Every memory brought a dark shadow that held her heart and squeezed it until it hurt.

"You're the one who should shut up. Look at you, Amita. You're helpless. No one's going to come for you. _No one_."

"They will come for me. Just like they came for Colby."

"I can't believe you think that. They don't know where you are. There's no way they can find out about this place. We're out of the city. There's usually no one here, apart from the people who want to be alone… and they want to be alone for a reason." Patrick told her. Amita didn't have to think long to know what that reason might be, but she did know that the FBI would have a field day.

Fear started to take over Amita's mental state, and she found herself thinking the way Patrick did. Charlie didn't love her. Charlie wanted another man. And Charlie was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

"Now that you've opened my present, don't you wanna thank me?" Patrick asked.

"Thank you for what? For ruining my life?" she said.

"So that means you've realized the truth… I'm proud of you, my slave."

"_I'm not your slave!_" Amita couldn't take the psychological torture anymore. This time she cried and yanked at the chains that were keeping her still.

That turned out to be a bad move. She knew that she shouldn't have broken in front of Patrick, because that would give him the signal that he had complete power over her and that as a result, he could do whatever he wanted with her.

Amita's weakness meant that he could treat her like his personal slave, no matter how much she insisted that she wasn't that for him.

"You are my slave… Don't you see? You're crying…, trembling…, and beautiful as always. And I can do with you anything that runs through my head."

Slowly, he put his lighter away, but he pulled out his knife again. This time he wasn't playing anymore. He cut her arms and legs in such a way that it would be bad, it would hurt, but she wouldn't die of the blood loss. And he was enjoying himself at her expense.

She screamed every time he made another cut ton her body, and when the physical torture ended, she was left to watch herself bleed without any kind of bandage she could use to hold the fluids from her body. Amita cried and writhed.

"I told you that you'd learn to like the pain," Patrick murmured, and he went to get something from his bag. He pulled out a lot of things, like a fusil and some grenades ready to be used. But what he was looking for was a cell phone. When he found it, he came back to where Amita was and covered her mouth while he dialed a number. "Saint Fate Motel? Yes, good afternoon. I'd like to make a reservation for tonight. Yes, your best room." Like he was the most charming person ever, he laughed and tried to sound very polite and kind. "Well, this is a special occasion. Me and my girlfriend, we just got married… Yeah, our families were against it, but we did it anyway… It was one of those cheap weddings that make it all more magical than the whole planned ceremony… It was so beautiful. _She_ was so beautiful. She's right here with me, and she can not wait for us to get there for our honeymoon…" He held Amita's gaze with a wicked grin on his face. "Room four. That's fantastic. No, don't worry about the price. All we want is to have some fun."

He hung up and caressed Amita's sweaty skin. "Mmm… you don't look good. I guess the fun will be only for me." Then the man laid down on the bed and played the video again on his laptop. This time, he didn't let Amita see it, he watched it himself only for kicks.

But Amita could hear Charlie and Colby's voices, and every time Patrick laughed or muttered something to himself, she couldn't help thinking about his theory. It was a slow torture that seemed to never come to an end.

Patrick fell asleep when the video ended. Silence took over the room, there were no sounds except the man's heavy breathing. Amita was still trembling and in pain, but at least she knew where Patrick was going to take her. She could come up with a plan so that Don and the team would find her. Someone had to have seen the moment she was kidnapped, even if it seemed like nobody had. Someone would talk to her friends and they would find a way to get to her, just like they had done it when Colby was in danger.

The wallpaper of the room was horrible and depressing, little pale pink roses with stripes of white and red. She didn't have any instrument to leave a message, except her own body.

She used her fingernails to scratch the wallpaper, writing a series of symbols that only Charlie would be able to understand. It was a code that she could easily calculate so that it represented some letters in his new book, "Mathematical Analysis of Friendship Dynamics."

It was very hard for her to write her message, given the awkward position she was in, and the pain she felt in her arms. But she ruined her nails and her fingers, writing on the wall only imagining what the letters would look like if they were on a mirror.

She described in a few words the original conditions of the kidnapping, and then she tried to calm down and rest. She had done everything she could. Now it was fate's turn to bring some luck to her life.

The morning after, she felt numb and her body didn't want to cooperate with her brain's instructions. She had lost quite the amount of blood, and she couldn't fight Patrick and stop him from taking her to the Saint Fate Motel.

Amita still responded to the hotel hosts' screams when Patrick was killing him, which was a good thing, it meant that she was still alert even though she felt as if she was about to pass out.

She didn't listen to anything he said to her in the new room. She didn't even know what the place looked like. All she wanted was to go to sleep.

The last thing she heard was the door being opened, and Don's voice saying, "You're ok, sweetie. Everything's ok now. We'll take you home." Then everything turned black.

When she opened her eyes again, she was at the hospital. The first thing she did was jump in her bed and grabbed the sheets like she was afraid that Patrick was still there. But then she realized that it was Don, Megan, David and Colby the ones that were surrounding her. She relaxed at the sight of them, and asked where her kidnapper was.

"We got him. Patrick's in jail now. You don't need to worry about him anymore," Don assured her.

Immediately, Larry and Charlie got into the room. Amita kissed her boyfriend on the cheek and held him tight, feeling him shake. He was so worried about her. He had been the one to break the code and bring her back to safety. She was so thankful that he was the person who was sharing his life with her.

Nevertheless, her happiness was over when she saw Charlie turn around only to put his arms around Colby. "Thanks for bringing her home, Colby. Thank you so much," she heard her boyfriend say, and she swallowed hard. Amita could now see something in the way both men looked at each other, especially after Colby had helped Charlie to solve the case.

She tried to get that thought out of her head, and the fact that Charlie remained at the hospital to make her company helped her a lot. They talked about equations, about the code itself, about how much Colby had contributed to Amita's rescue. Now the agent seemed to be harmless. He had just helped Charlie out to save his girlfriend, nothing more.

Amita started to feel happy for Charlie. After all, he had made a new friend, and that was a good thing.

But when Charlie felt asleep and muttered Colby's name and the word "kiss" in the same sentence, Amita's world completely shattered and she knew for sure that Patrick, her crazy sadistic ex-boyfriend, had been right all along. His present had opened her eyes, and the fact that he had give it to her before her birthday was going to bring some very back luck to everyone's lives.

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_**A/N: FEEDBACK IS LOVE.**_


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